Knife tool perpendicular cut
There is a way to do this in blender. Its not as good as the one on maya (as much as I hate to say it...) but it works
Now this is on a mac so the shortcut is different
So here is a picture of the very bottom of your screen when you use the knife tool:


In the middle you should see something that says midpoint snap. This snaps your cursor to the middle of the nearest edge. The shortcut will be to the right side of the text. For me, it is the symbol ^/^ (which is control on mac) When you use it, it will only connect to the middles of edges, so it is basically 90 degree tool. Once you do this, use an edge slide (press g twice while an edge is selected) and move it to your desired location
Hope this helps.